Where are YOU from?

by Jason O'Neal

When someone asks you, "where are you from?" what do you say? 

Are they asking where you were born? Do they want to know the city and state? What about the country? Are they asking where you've spent the majority of your life? Or, are they asking where you call home at the moment? Does ethnicity and cultural heritage need to be provided?

I am often at odds with how best to answer this question. It's not because I'm confused or unable to answer that inquiry, but more like wondering what exactly are they looking for from my response. Not long ago, and in various parts of the world, the wrong answer could get you imprisoned, exiled, or even tortured and killed. Providing a response that was deemed unacceptable by the local authority could prohibit you from full participation as a member of society. Some differences were easier to hide than others, however, physical differences in appearance remained one of the favorite methods to persecute someone. Many of these practices still exist and, in countless regions of the world today, there are groups of people fighting each other because they've been convinced into believing the other guy is their enemy. Maybe because of their religion, color of skin, the language they speak, or the social class they come from.

Before I begin a full explanation of how the ruling power in society maintains control over a population, I will let you know a little about me. I was born and raised in Texas living there until I was eighteen. With the exception of a few years during my early childhood I lived in the southern region of the state for most of my time with my parents. My stepfather was an oilfield roughneck and eventually made it as high as production superintendent for a small independent company. Because he dropped out of high school after the ninth grade my dad wasn't able to move any higher. For most of my childhood my mother stayed home to work and she could afford to do so because of my stepfather's income. 

It was the early to mid-1980s, during the Reagan years of the Cold War, and we lived in the southern end of the bible belt in a small agriculture community surrounded by landowners and oil wells. A high school dropout could earn $45,000 a year here (approximately $130,000 in today's dollars) while working for a petroleum company extracting crude oil to pipeline it to the refinery in town. It was all based on personality, reputation, and entertainment and my dad was made for that industry because he could party like a frat boy on pledge night almost every night. On the evenings he didn't drive straight home from work, his pocketbook was open to everyone who was drinking with him in the establishment while he was there. 

He had a run at the middle class level for about nine years before the drinking caught up with him. Too many arrests for driving intoxicated in a company vehicle, but I didn't know it back then. When I did find out it helped explain why my mother started working part-time a couple of years before we had to move into an older, smaller house on the other end of town. Right next to the tractor-trailer entrance of the refinery. With almost two years of no luck for my stepfather in finding another job, my mom was offered a motel manager position in a town two hours away. They moved and I finished the school year before I had to rejoin them the very next summer. 

I spent my last year of high school in a new town where I knew almost no one. I was fortunate enough to pass most of the summer working at a fast food restaurant where I was able to meet a few of my fellow classmates. This place was on the banks of a reservoir of the Rio Grande, the river that separates the United States and Mexico. There were more than 130 students in my graduating class at the only high school in town. Double what was at the school I just came from. I was one of only eight "Anglos" in that graduating class and everyone else was first- or second-generation immigrants from Mexico if they weren't an already established family with thousands of acres of land around the county.

I remember the trip when I first moved there. My father and I were driving by the high school and football stadium which was much larger than the one where I played before. 

As my dad's truck sped up the two-lane highway he said, "It was oil money that built that stadium." 

He then added, "without the oil industry no one would live in this place."

I believed him in spite of the many families in the region who owned the cattle ranches. Some of them since the Spanish Empire first imposed their property laws and land regime on the American Continent. I also believed him in spite of the people I came to know over that school year. Teachers, fellow students, and working class folks just trying to make a decent life for their families. After that, I couldn't believe him anymore, although, I did start to question his belief in the John Wayne mythology of American History. 

And, did I mention that my dad was quite fond of saying things like there were too many Mexicans around? 

So, I guess I am from Texas... just not very proud of the version of the story that I grew up with.